Bill Gates Can Kiss My Ass

I’m pissed.

I’m aggravated.

I’m completely inept at effectively manipulating CSS or any other code for that matter.

A week or so ago I put together a blog for my father. No biggie, right? Yeah, well, all was fine until I started jacking with code. Everything was great - exactly what I wanted - in Firefox. But, it turned out IE interpreted things a bit differently. The site was a mess and completely unreadable in Internet Explorer.

Oops. My bad.

Because I wasn’t really sure what I’d done, I went ahead and deleted the whole theme I’d started with. I could handle starting over… I mean, it was my fault, right?

So, after looking around a bit, I decided to go with the latest version of this theme - cutline. It’s has a smooth design and offered some key usability features. Basically it looked idiot proof.

I uploaded the theme and installed my various tracking scripts. Then I did the obligatory check and found everything appeared correct in both browsers. Ding Ding - off to the races.

Well 4 posts and over 2000 views later I discovered one tiny little problem…

Here, take a look for yourself (click on the thumbnail):


Nice, huh?

The damn “submit” button doesn’t display in IE. And guess what… about 88% of those 2000 visitors viewed the thing in IE.

AGGGGG! *&^%*%(&**!!!!

This is definitely no bueno. And, needless to say, I’m not happy about it. And, to be honest, I have no idea how to fix it either. I’m totally clueless.

I’m fairly sure it wasn’t my fault this time. And, I’m fairly sure the smart folks who put this theme together didn’t screw it up either.

No, this is all Bill Gates fault.

And you know what I’m gonna do about it? huh? Well I’ll tell ya what I’m gonna do about it! I’m gonna whine and complain and throw a text based temper tantrum.

Oh yeah, besides that stuff, I’m gonna try to find someone who knows how to fix the problem -and I’m not talking ’sniper’ folks. I’m sure rent-a-coder is full of folks that can fix it in minutes. I hope. Sigh.

The lesson in all of this is pretty clear: Conduct a complete function test on all aspects of your site before you go live with it… a quick ‘once over’ for visual errors ain’t gonna cut it.

Ouch. Lesson learned.

I’m out. Talk to ya later.

Sean


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9 Comments »

Comment by Abby
2007-10-30 07:34:21

why IE and not Firefox?

 
Comment by Steve Warshaw
2007-10-30 18:33:43

No offense man, but Bill Gates doesn’t write the code for every Microsoft Product. Also, to be clear, IE conforms more closely to the w3c specification than does FF. This is a well documented fact.

If you want me to take look at the code I will fix t for free.

 
Comment by James Francis
2007-10-30 18:42:31

Cutline rocks! Firefox rocks! IE sucks!

 
Comment by Mark Kanty
2007-10-30 21:15:37

Thanks for the reminder Sean. I’m so comfortable working in FF I forget to check things out over at IE.

 
Comment by Danny Lister
2007-10-31 23:06:00

I know how you feel mate! I generally design sites with Firefox along side IE7 at the same time. Then I enter IE6 hack mode once complete in the above two. Danny.

 
Comment by Rich
2007-11-01 12:22:32

Not that this will help much, but there is an extension for firefox called ‘ietab’ which lets you load an IE session in a firefox tab.

If you feel up to hacking, check the HTML for the page in question and look for the end form tag:

Try putting this in just before it and see what happens:

 
Comment by Rich
2007-11-01 12:23:40

Ooops, wordpress went and formatted my comment.

I mean look for
<form>

Then put in

<input type=”submit”>

 
Comment by Sean
2007-11-04 19:44:40

@Abby - Honestly, I don’t know. I just know a browser interprets the HTML and displays it in a visual format for us to view. Some browsers interpret things a little different than others, but I don’t know why.

@Steve - Once again, thanks for all the help. And don’t worry, nobody will hold the Microsoft thing against you. ;) Just kidding.

@Danny - It looks like the problem wasn’t IE in general. Steve checked and it looks like I’m still using IE6 and it views and functions fine in IE7. I guess, as much as it irks me, I’m going to have to upgrade my IE. Ekk.

@Rich - Thanks. That was helpful on several levels. I’m going to put in a “don’t be a dumbass; switch to FireFox” link at the comments section. I suppose I’m also have to add a “Click on the “I’m not too bright” to upgrade to IE7″ link, too.

I appreciate all of the comments and all of the help. Y’all rock. Seriously. Sorry I was a bit slow in responding, but I wanted to be able to report the fix when I responded.

Take care,

Sean

 
2008-04-09 09:24:26

@Steve Warshaw You are kidding right? IE adheres to web standards better than Firefox? LOL Even IE7 doesn’t adhere to the full set. IE6 is a pathetic mess. If your comment was to be sarcastic then forgive my comments, if not it is clear that you have no understanding of web standards.

@sean This is what web designers and developers go through every day. Microsoft has been a stain on the web for years now. Finally they are coming around to it. Unfortunely IE7 still doesn’t cut it fully. It is a step in the right direction. Let us see what happens with IE8.

My browser of choice is Safari 3 on the Mac. As far as support for CSS Safari passes the Acid2 Test , Firefox 2 still doesn’t. Also Firefox is way to slow on a Mac and doesn’t adhere to interface guidelines on the OS.

Hopefully Safari will pass the Acid 3 test soon. Firefox 3 Beta 5 does already which is great. Here is some testing results I did this morning with the most current builds of each browser on both platforms.

Acid2
———-
IE6 (windows) fails
IE7 (windows) fails
Safari 3 (mac) passes
Firefox 2.0.0.13 (mac) fails
Opera 9.27 (mac) passes

Acid3
——–
IE6 (windows) fails 11/100
IE7 (windows) fails 11/100
Safari 3 (mac) fails 75/100
Firefox 2.0.0.13 (mac) fails 53/100
Firefox 2.0.0.13 (windows) fails 53/100
Opera 9.27 (mac) fails 43/100
Opera 9.27 (windows) fails 46/100

Once again Safari leads the pack… another reason for choosing it as my preferred browser.

 
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